The Fourth Wall (28 page)

The second act started. I felt a tap on my arm and looked up to see Griselda holding out a Styrofoam container of iced tea. I never tasted anything so good in my life.

The electrician was sulking, but he didn't have much to do in the second act so I didn't worry about him. I didn't have a whole lot to do either, so I was able to watch the performance a little. Oh, my wonderful actors, how I loved them that night! I loved them all! So did the NYPD, evidently, for there seemed to be an unusually large number of police standing around watching the stage.
Why aren't you looking in dark corners for hatchetmen?
I thought irritably, and turned back to my cue sheets.

My stomach was growling. I'd gone straight from the hospital to the theater without stopping for lunch, and now I was wishing I'd given Hugh Odell only half my sandwich.

After a while I began to feel a slight pressure on my back. When I looked around I was appalled at the number of police packed into the wings—at least I assumed they were police: grim-looking strangers with fixed, glassy stares. I poked the stomach of the man who was pressing against me, smiled sweetly, and said, “Back off.”

He moved about an inch. Just then Hugh Odell came off the stage and had to elbow his way through the crowd.

That did it. I pushed against a couple of the men and said, “You've got to move! You're blocking the exits. Move
back
!”

They tried. There was some shuffling and looking around for a place to stand, but there were so many of them there just wasn't room. Where did they all come from? There weren't that many police when the performance started.

Then I caught sight of Lieutenant Goodlow. I pushed my way through to him and said, “You've got to move your men. They're in the way. Tell them to wait outside, or in the prop room, or on the other side of the stage. But not here.”

The Lieutenant nodded and spoke to the man standing next to him. Some of the men began to move away, a bit too noisily, but we had some breathing space again.

I tried not to worry about this influx of police; I had to concentrate on the performance. But it was no good. When we came to a free place in the play, I went over and plucked at Lieutenant Goodlow's sleeve. “All right. What's up?”

He gazed over my head. “Who's in charge here tonight?”

“I am.”

“Then I'd better tell you.” He noticed the doorkeeper watching us with interest and motioned me aside. “Bad news. The worst yet.”

I didn't say anything, waiting.

“Ian Cavanaugh's home has been bombed. His wife and daughter are dead. And a bodyguard Cavanaugh hired to protect them.”

For some reason, I didn't believe him. He was making it up. “I don't believe you,” I said calmly.

The Lieutenant looked at me sadly. “It's true.”

“They're dead. Ian's wife and daughter … and a bodyguard. They're all dead, you say.”

Lieutenant Goodlow didn't say anything, just watched me.

“It didn't happen.” Then suddenly I knew it was true. “It
did
happen. They're dead. Three people?”

The Lieutenant took hold of my arm. “Are you going be all right?”

“No,” I said, pulling away. “Probably not.” I stumbled back to my cue sheets.

“What is it?” Griselda asked me. I couldn't answer her.

Ian was on stage now. I watched that big, poised, handsome man move through his role with a confidence that would soon be shattered forever. I didn't hear any of the other actors' voices, just Ian's. I
saw
only Ian, enjoying the last few minutes of uneasy peace he would ever know.

A performance was in progress; I couldn't make any noise. I clenched my fists and opened my mouth and screamed—silently. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Without making a sound. I didn't stop screaming until I realized Griselda had put her arms around me and was squeezing, hard. She looked terrified, her eyes big and her mouth gaping. It was the look on Griselda's face that brought me to my senses. I sort of collapsed against her for a minute, and then said, “Okay. It's okay now.”

Only it wasn't. Nothing was okay. Nothing on this whole godless, violent, sick little planet was okay. Lieutenant Goodlow was watching, looking as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. I told him Griselda should know what had happened; the next time I saw her, she was leaning against Tiny, crying.

I didn't want the performance to end, but in time it did. Ian stood smiling during the curtain call—fattening, actorlike, on the waves of admiration and love that floated up from the audience. This was what it was all for.

When I closed the curtain for the last time, the cast came laughing off the stage, exhausted but happy.
Who's going to tell him?

Lieutenant Goodlow approached Ian and said something. I couldn't hear over the chatter around me, but the Lieutenant gestured toward the dressing rooms. Ian, however, froze—sensing the disaster, somehow. Lieutenant Goodlow tried to get Ian to go with him, but Ian, immobile and granite-faced, said something that had a sharp and commanding tone to it.

A little circle of space had formed around the two men, and the talk gradually died away. A laugh started and broke off in the middle. In a voice inaudible to the rest of us, Lieutenant Goodlow told Ian his family had been murdered.

Ian never looked more remote and untouchable than he did at that moment. All around me people were whispering—
What is it? What's happened now?
Lieutenant Goodlow spoke to Ian but received no answer. Ian jerked off his tie and dropped it on the floor. Then he slipped out of his suit jacket and let it fall.

I went over and put my hand on his arm. “Ian?”

He didn't even know I was there. He ripped off his shirt, popping the buttons. Piece by piece Ian took off all his clothes and then, stark-naked, walked out of the theater.

Part Three

1

Foxfire
closed.

By mutual consent, with one exception: Vivian Frank wanted to keep going. But even Gene Ramsay, hastily returned from Europe, knew he couldn't buck the boycott announced by Equity and the stagehands' union. Nor did he particularly want to; Ramsay was as sickened by what had happened as the rest of us.

I had made no objection. The swell of resistance that had pushed me into stage-managing the last performance collapsed like a punctured balloon. My lovely play had turned so sour I doubted that I'd ever want to see it again. No one would ever watch the play without thinking of its horrible, destruction-filled history. No one would ever watch the play
for itself
again. Gene Ramsay had half-promised me
Foxfire
could reopen once the killer was caught and the furor had died down, but I wasn't going to hold him to it. Our enemy had killed my play as well as Ian Cavanaugh's family.

For a long time I struggled with a new kind of guilt. I had not lost people I loved or a part of my body the way the others had. I couldn't begin to understand the agony Ian Cavanaugh must be going through, knowing he was the cause of the deaths of the people he cared about most in the world. Wouldn't he feel like a murderer himself? How could anyone live with that? Knowing four people were dead because someone hated
him
—how could a man live with that?

Four people—that was the final count. Ian's wife, his daughter, one of two bodyguards Ian employed, and an old woman in the house next door. The other bodyguard had been outside checking the grounds when the bomb went off. He'd lost a leg. The house itself, in Yorkville, was reduced to rubble; the house next door, the one where the old woman had lived, had lost one entire side.

Had our enemy hired a professional? Polar ammon gelignite, the police said, a commercial blend—probably stolen. Detonated by radio transmission. That meant the bomb could have been planted any time, even before Ian had hired the bodyguards. The official police guess was that it had been concealed in an air duct. The radio transmitter that set it off could have been located anywhere, depending on its range.

Ian had not gone far when he left the theater—only a few steps, in fact. Lieutenant Goodlow and his men had gotten some clothes on him and hustled him off to a hospital where he was treated for shock. None of us were permitted to visit. Then after a few days Ian was discharged and went—where? To a hotel? I didn't know. The police weren't saying.

Ian's shedding of his clothes was an admission of defeat more shattering than anything else he could have done. The most private person I knew had exposed himself totally to whatever force it was that was out to destroy him.
All right
, the act had said,
here I am. Do your worst
.

Ian's symbolic acting out of what had happened to him was as natural as it was terrible. But if he continued the gesture, there could be only one result:
That way lies madness
. The fact that the hospital had released him after only a few days suggested the moment had passed. Now Ian was alone somewhere, perhaps fighting suicide, perhaps under psychiatric care, perhaps not. The police wouldn't tell me. The police wouldn't tell me anything.

Lieutenant Goodlow had been taken off the case. Now a Captain Mitchell was in charge—first a sergeant, then a lieutenant, now a captain. But Captain Mitchell was not the accommodating source of information Lieutenant Goodlow had been. His underlings gave me the brush-off every time I phoned, and Hugh Odell said he had gotten the same treatment. Ian's whereabouts were secret, and they were going to be kept secret.

There was one new thing about this latest catastrophe: the fact that our enemy may have hired someone else to do the dirty work. Did this mean he'd shown his face to another person? Or had he been able to conceal his identity in his dealings with the bomber? How does one go about hiring a bomber anyway? How are these things
arranged?
The newspapers had a heyday speculating over the various possibilities.

But I didn't do any speculating myself, because it just didn't matter any more. Our enemy had won. It was over. He'd got us, every single one of us who'd served on Manhattan Repertory's governing committee at the time of the Michael Crown disaster. Two of us were dead, three of us were maimed, one had been terrorized into dropping out, two had lost people they loved, and one had had her work destroyed. Nine targets, more than nine victims. And still the police did not have the remotest idea of who had done these things.

Nor would they ever. I was convinced now as never before that the official protectors of the people would never, never unmask the lunatic whose destructive obsession had ruined so many lives. I'd said before I didn't think the police would catch him—so had we all, at one time or another. But even when you're saying a thing like that, you don't completely believe it—always at bottom there's a slight glimmer of hope, hope that at the eleventh hour the cavalry will ride to the rescue, that Big Daddy will step in and make things right.

Our enemy had succeeded and our police had failed. It was done, a
fait accompli
. Captain Mitchell would have no more success than Sergeant Piperson or Lieutenant Goodlow before him. We'd spend the rest of our lives wondering who our enemy was—a nice metaphor for the times, wouldn't you say? You can have it.

Such was my own state of shock that it took me several days to realize where Ian Cavanaugh must be staying. I went to John Reddick's apartment and rang the bell. No answer, but I hadn't answered the door either while I was staying there. Was Ian inside or not? I'd left my key with the super when I moved back into my own place. But if Ian didn't want anyone intruding on his grief, then I wouldn't intrude. I scribbled a note—
Let me help
—and stuck it in the doorjamb.

John Reddick himself hadn't been picked up in Mississippi or any of the neighboring states Lieutenant Goodlow had notified. In a way I was glad. I wasn't exactly proud of the way I had instinctively run to the police the minute I'd heard from John. It was a mini-betrayal, and my only excuse was at the time I still had a slight faith in the ability of the police to catch our persecutor. But John, even with his foreign appearance, had been able to melt into the crowd. I wondered if I'd ever see him again.

Some hitherto unsuspected strain of masochism drew me to the Martin Beck Theatre the day the
Foxfire
set was being struck. I sat in the auditorium and watched the set come down piece by piece. The scenery would all be taken out and burned. If Gene Ramsay ever did reopen
Foxfire
, an entirely new set would have to be built. That was cheaper than paying storage costs for the old one. When at last the job was finished and the workmen left, I went up on to the stage.

There is nothing in the world so lonesome as a deserted stage. It is an anomaly, a wrong crying out to be righted, an offense against nature. There are some who like to say a theater is never empty, it's always filled with echoes from the past—the sounds of great plays, great actors, reverberating forever. Wishful thinking, I'm afraid. Ghosts merely remind us of what we have lost. A theater should be alive and vibrant and filled with people and light and color and movement and words, words, words. The
Foxfire
stage had been empty only five minutes, but already the dust of neglect was settling over one more sepulcher for one more ghost. And it was my child who had died here.

I shrugged and reminded myself a new play would be opening soon. It just wouldn't be
my
play.

Leo Gunn left town—temporarily, he said, but I told him I wouldn't blame him if he never came back. Nova Scotia was Leo's Forest of Arden; he had a small house outside Halifax to which he retreated periodically to maintain his sanity, he said. When he came back he'd be fitted with a prosthetic device. Leo had decided on a mechanical pronged claw apparatus instead of an artificial hand.

I got sick. Just a virus, but one of those that leave you weak as a kitten afterward. So instead of being in the Shubert Theatre on June fifth, I sat at home huddled in a blanket watching the Tony Awards on television.